Using Live Bait
The most crucial element in catching hybrids is actually catching the bait! When you have a tank full of lively shad, the toughest part of the day is over. Hybrid and Striped Bass love live bait and Oconeehybrids specializes in live bait fishing. Fishing with live shad and herring is the most exciting fishing trip you will ever take. We troll these baits slowly over schools of fish, and when the strike comes it can be really violent! Huge stripers and hybrids can blast these shad three feet out of the water and then come crashing down on top of them. During the month of April and May we use gizzard which are sometimes 12 inches long. It is fast, furious and fun. A few years ago while attaching a planer board to my line, while my bait was just in the water beside my boat, a huge 20 + pounder attacked the shad and took the rod, line and board completely out of my hand!

Casting nets
Casting nets come in all size and shapes. I throw a Calusa 5 foot net in the summer and a 10-foot radius in the winter. Many people think that throwing a cast net is a next to an impossible task, but it is really quite simple. Go to http://www.calusa.com/howtothrow.cfm to watch a free instructional video on how to throw a net. I suggest that you have another container of some type that you initially dump your shad into before you place them in your bait well. This will allow them to dump their waste (which they will do in just the matter of a few minutes) into your initial holding container before they enter your bait well.